Alex Baines is a writer, educator, and candidate in the IPTD program. A British native, he previously received a BA in English from the University of Oxford and an MA in Text and Performance from Birkbeck, University of London and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. His research focuses on theatre and performance practices at reconstructed heritage sites, particularly within contexts of Britain and empire. He has lived and worked as an educator and theatre maker in various places around the world including Cambridge (UK), Moscow, rural south-west England, and Shanghai. Alex is affiliated with the British Studies cluster and is the recipient of a Mellon Interdisciplinary Cluster Fellowship. During the academic year 2024-2025, he is a research fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library as part of the institution’s “Whose Democracy?” season.

Will Bixby holds a BFA in Theatre and Dance from Missouri State University and an MA in English from George Washington University. Will is a puppetry practitioner and scholar whose current research interests focus on puppet performance, materialism, affect studies, and gender. Will is also a trained actor and has performed and directed for a number of companies.

Jooyoung Cho (she/they) is a theatre scholar, dramaturg, media and theatre artist, and educator. She received her BA in English literature with a Secondary School Teacher’s Certificate in English and a minor in Media Interaction Design at Ewha Womans University. Her MA in English literature, also at Ewha, holds a concentration in modern British and American drama. Her master’s thesis, which received an Ewha Outstanding Graduate Thesis Award, dealt with Tom Stoppard’s unique utopianism projected onto the landscape garden in Arcadia (1993). Her article on the ecodramaturgy of Carla and Lewis (2010) has been published in The Journal of Modern English Drama. Her research interests include multi-/interspecies performance, connecting veganism with animal plays and animal liberation movements as a performance/ritual, ecodrama(turgy), the ecopolitics of poetics in drama, theatrical aesthetics, and everyday performances that illuminate humans’ mutual enmeshment with the nonhuman world. She is particularly interested in analyzing dramatic text as well as contemporary theatre and performance through the intersection of environmental humanities with affect, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, food, disability, and transnationalism. Before joining IPTD, she served as an actor, educator, dramaturg, director, designer, and interpreter/translator in numerous productions, and as a writer/reviewer/editor for theater publications in South Korea. At Northwestern, she dramaturged Imagine U: Me…Jane: The Dreams & Adventures of Young Jane Goodall at the Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts. She believes that theatre, where we constantly transform ourselves and where tomorrow’s performance awaits, is an imminent utopia that is not yet real but immanent in the present.

Deon Custard is Chicago- born, raised, and based scholar of 17th century English culture & performance practices. His dissertation project is focused on “Ardenspaces” in the city of Chicago and how these educational third spaces facilitate valuable learning experiences that supplement the existing arts ecosystem. Other things Deon is thinking about are the sonic performances of basketball games, how Tolkien and GRRMartin teach us to better think about history and religion, and the ways in which civil wars live in the cultural memory. Beyond the 1600s, Deon has been practicing his bass again and is passionate about comics (stand-up and the books), heavy metal, hip-hop, and listening to the film score before he sees the movie. Recent sound design credits include “Villette” (Lookingglass w/ Brandon Reed); “From the Mississippi Delta” (Lifeline); “Dance Nation”, “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”, “Marisol” (Northwestern University); “Everybody” (Santa Fe Playhouse).

Ana Díaz Barriga is a puppetry practitioner and scholar interested in the application of cognitive science approaches and methods to the study of puppetry and spectatorship. She is the recipient of a Cognitive Science Advanced Research Fellowship and a Mellon Cluster Fellowship in Science Studies. Her current research investigates the sophisticated ways puppeteers guide viewers’ minds and bodies to make meaning of contemporary puppetry performance using methods from both cognitive science and theatre studies. Ana has presented her work at IFTR and ASTR. In addition to her research, she is also a CIRTL Scholar and a Graduate Teaching Mentor at the Searle Center for Advanced Learning and Teaching. Ana has a BA in Drama from the University of Glamorgan (UK) and an MA in Advanced Theatre Practice from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (UK).

Suzi Elnaggar is an Egyptian-American performance scholar, freelance dramaturg, and theatre-maker. She was a 2021 Kennedy Center Dramaturgy Intensive Fellow and works as both a developmental and production dramaturg. She holds an M. A. in Theatre Studies from Baylor University, where she researched the work of Heather Raffo through the lens of trauma studies. She has been published in Asian Theatre Journal, Arab Stages, and Theatre Times. Her research interests include recontextualizing Greek tragedy, post-colonial theatre contexts, theatre of social change, the intersection of trauma and performance, and work that centers around SWA/MENA (Southwest Asian/Middle Eastern and North African) experiences. Her scholarship and practice center community, collaboration, and context.

An arts writer and photographer from New Delhi, Raunak’s writing and research is situated in the overlap between expressionist, body-horror cinemas and contemporary American pop-cultures with reference to critical and formalist studies of queerness. They hold a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, and an M.Phil in Film and Screen Studies from the University of Cambridge — where they were the recipient of the Joan Simms Prize for Academic Excellence. As a doctoral student of Interdisciplinary Theatre and Drama at Northwestern, Raunak is also affiliated with the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program as a Mellon Foundation Interdisciplinary Cluster Fellow.

Phoenix Gonzalez earned her B.A. in Religion from Princeton University, with Certificates (minors) in Theater and Medieval Studies. After several years in New York City as a tech startup product manager by day, actor by night, and all around frequent Met Cloisters museum patron, she attended Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music to study the intersection of Christian ritual and theater in the Middle Ages. There, she received her Master of Arts in Religion and continued on the medieval drama wagon out to Chicago. The recipient of a Mellon Cluster Fellowship in Medieval Studies, at Northwestern, her research centers medieval drama then and now, and she is committed to merging her scholarly pursuits with her practice as an actor and director in staging these fascinating plays today.

Brandon Greenhouse (he/him) is from Louisiana by way of Texas. He received his BFA in Musical Theatre from College of Santa Fe in New Mexico and an MFA in Acting from Northern Illinois University. His research focuses on the lineages of Black performativity. He explores 19th century orators and ministerial figures to excavate lexicons of sound, movement, and meaning making. He is also interested in how these early engagements with religious performance laid the groundwork for future iterations of Black theatricality. Extending from a long line of Southern ministers, Brandon grounds much of his work in his foundational religious experiences. Working with familial archives and first person encounter, he weaves experiential knowledge and historical record to track the evolution of Black performance both inside and outside of the church.

Heather Grimm holds a BA in Theatre and Economics from Denison University and an MA in Theatre and Performance from Queen Mary University of London. Her research interests include the history of popular entertainment, comedy studies, ethnographic methods, historiography, and audience studies. Heather’s dissertation is an ethnographic study of bluegrass music in the Midwest that applies methods from theatre studies to popular music performance. At Northwestern, Heather serves as a Graduate Writing Place Fellow and is affiliated with the Critical Theory Cluster.

Gillian Hemme received her BA in Theatre from Grinnell College and her MA in Theatre and Performative Practices from University College Cork. She studies performance within and about sites of institutionalized violence in twentieth-century Ireland. Her work uses embodied practices to understand the role of performance in the lives of women who were incarcerated in Catholic Church-run Magdalene Laundries. She has served as the director of Piven Theatre Workshop’s EPIC (Ensemble Play in Corrections) program at Cook County Jail since co-founding it in 2016. She is a recipient of a Mellon Cluster Fellowship in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Gillian is also a performer, playwright, and director. She invites you to learn more about her work at www.gillianhemme.com.

Claudia Kinahan is a scholar-artist from Co.Clare, Ireland with research interests in nonhuman and object performance, new materialisms and posthumanism, feminist technoscience, gender, race, and film and media studies. Her work examines how objects and technologies, like robots and digital avatars, are gendered and racialized through performance. Claudia holds a First Class Hons. BA with a Gold Medal in Drama and Theatre Studies from Trinity College, Dublin. 

Claudia also maintains an artistic practice and as an award-winning theatre maker has directed, written, and performed for numerous stages including the Abbey Theatre, Smock Alley Theatre, RTÉ Television, Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, and the American Music Theatre Project. She is passionate about practice-based research and often bridges her scholarly and artistic pursuits through her creative work. You can find out more about her work at claudiakinahantheatre.com.

Alex Knapp is a PhD candidate in Northwestern University’s Interdisciplinary Program in Theatre and Drama. His research interests and pedagogy focus on contemporary performance, materialism(s)/material culture, and aesthetic theory with respect to the environmental humanities, more-than-human and other-than-human relations, and political history, theory, and economy. Alex’s dissertation investigates how artists and activists deal with environmental threats and the creation of the “corpse” aesthetically, philosophically, performatively, and politically to make legible a necropolitics of ecological death. His essay “Breathing Bricks: Nut Brother’s Dust Project and the Politics of Particulate Matter” won the 2021 TDR Student Essay Contest (TDR: The Drama Review, Cambridge University Press).

Chloë Jackson (she/they) earned her B.A. in Theatre and Performance and English from Spelman College (May 2021). Her academic work surrounds questions of how Black life is experienced, documented, and performed, using 20th-century Black theatrical and literary works as frames of analysis. Particularly, they maintain an investment in Black women, queer folk, and the American South. Chloë’s recent research explored Black Southern matriarchs as moral authorities within and beyond the Harlem Renaissance. Alongside her academic work, she is a dramaturg and educator.

Liz Laurie received her BA in Classical Civilization from New York University and an MA in Theatre from Hunter College. Her dissertation project explores representations of gender and sexuality in cosplay at fan conventions in the United States. Her research interests include popular culture, digital humanities, and fan practice as performance. She is affiliated with the Gender and Sexuality Cluster and is a fellow at Northwestern’s The Writing Place.

Noah Marcus earned both his BA in Theatre and his MA in Theatre Theory and Dramaturgy from the University of Ottawa where he wrote his thesis on the performance of Jewish rituals in real life and their performance on the theatrical stage in The Dybbuk: Or Between Two Worlds. His research interests include Jewish theatre, Jewish rituals, and the performance of identity. He is interested in not only how Jewish identity is created and performed on the stage, but also how such theatrical performances of Jewishness interact with existing Jewish identities and/or create a new sense of Jewishness at both the individual and community level. Noah is affiliated with the Jewish Studies Interdisciplinary Cluster and is the recipient of a Mellon Interdisciplinary Cluster Fellowship.

Gabrielle Randle received a BA in Drama and Sociology from Stanford University and an MA in Performance as Public Practice from The University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include conscious dramaturgical interventions in the staging of protest and survival. Her research currently centers on the acts of testimony and witness in the performance of Black Women Revolutionaries. Gabrielle is affiliated with the Comparative Race and Diaspora Cluster and is the recipient of a Mellon Interdisciplinary Cluster Fellowship.

Sierra Rosetta holds a BA in Theatre from Northwestern College-Iowa. She is a Native American theater artist and scholar (Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe) whose work focuses on Ojibwe stories, Indigenous archives, public humanities, dramaturgy, and Indigenous resistance in performance and media, particularly at the Hayward Indian Boarding School. Named one of Theatre Communication Group’s “Rising Leaders of Color” in 2024, Sierra wears many hats in her dramaturgy, playwriting, acting, and academic practices. As both a production and new-play dramaturg, her work has been seen at Goodman Theatre, Northwestern University, Native Voices, Hedgepig Theatre Ensemble, and various individual sessions with playwrights. Her research and practice focuses on incorporating Indigenous dramaturgy methodologies into theatrical practice. She is the founder of the dramaturgy mentorship program at Native Voices Theater in LA, where she also works as the Literary Associate and pairs emerging Native dramaturgs with career dramaturgs for one-on-one mentorship at Native Voices’ various festivals. Her literary work started at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in 2023 where she worked as a Literary Fellow after winning the Kennedy Center American Collegiate Theatre Festival national dramaturgy award in 2023. As a playwright, Sierra was the winner of Yale University’s Indigenous Performing Arts Program Young Native Playwright award in 2024. In her limited free time, Sierra enjoys reading, playing piano, singing karaoke, “beaching,” and playing with her Holland Lop bunny, Siro.

Rachel Russell, from Baltimore, MD, holds a BFA in Dance Pedagogy from Columbia College Chicago and a MA in Performance Studies from New York University. Her research includes understanding, documenting, and conceptualizing the present day history of Black Women dancers, choreographers and their predecessors. Rachel is affiliated with the Interdisciplinary Cluster in Gender & Sexuality and is the recipient of a Mellon Interdisciplinary Cluster Fellowship.

Caroline Shadle (she/her), from Chicago, IL, received a BA in American Studies and English from Wesleyan University (CT) and an MA in Dance Studies from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, where she was a Dean’s Scholar. Caroline researches twentieth-century U.S. dance, with a focus on 1930s concert dance in Chicago funded by the Federal Theatre Project. Caroline has long been involved in the dance world in various capacities: as a dance practitioner in Chicago and New York and at Wesleyan; an arts administrator at institutions including The Joyce Theater, The Kennedy Center, and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival; and a freelance dance writer for publications including Dance Magazine, Dance Teacher, and Fjord Review.

Emry Sottile is an active role-player, theatre practitioner, dramaturg, stage manager, and writer in the PhD program. Prior to their doctoral work, they received an M.A. in War in Society, a B.F.A. in Television Writing and Production, and a B.A. in History from Chapman University. Their research focuses on role-play performance—with an emphasis on table-top role-playing games, larp, and interactive theatre—and how these communal practices with queer utopian potentiality push the limits of what the “theatre” in theatre studies looks like. They also examine musicals, video games, and other popular culture sites of digital age cultural memory and community formation in the face of neoliberal capitalism. Their work can be found in The International Journal of Role-Playing and forthcoming issues of Studies in Musical Theatre (18:2), The Journal of Popular Culture, and Transformative Works and Cultures. Practice-wise, they specialize in musical theatre dramaturgy and have worked on Wirtz productions including Violet (2023) and The Prom (2023). Additionally, as a larpwright they have written short scenarios and have been on blockbuster larp’s writing staff including Coddiwomple Alliance’s Auxientia (2024 Run) and Grimmoire Productions’ Hawkins (Running October 2025).

Rebecca Turner holds a BA in English (Drama and Theatre) and Jewish Studies from McGill University. Her research focuses on Yiddish women dramatists with the goal to document, understand, and uplift their writings from marginalized genres such as children’s theatre and shund [trash] musicals as well as “high art” and political dramas. Her research interests also include conceptions of Yiddishkeit, Jewish female immigrant identity, and “radical” political alignment on and off the pre-WWII Yiddish stage. Rebecca is affiliated with the Jewish Studies Interdisciplinary Cluster and is the recipient of a Mellon Cluster Fellowship. She is also a director, playwright, and translator.

Elena Weber received her BA and MA in Media Studies, Theater Studies and Art History from the University of Cologne. Her research interests include ethnographic methods, urban studies, spatial practices, and the performative reproduction and reenactment of history. Elena’s dissertation is a mixed-method, ethnographic and archival project on public performances in Rome’s historic center. It creates a genealogy centralizing performances in the formation and perpetuation of ideology.